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Variant Campaign Rules
Being a living campaign, Fiend's Reach requires a number of the variant systems presented by Paizo to enhance the experience of our players. There are also some rules that make the game a bit more difficult to run sessions for a wide variety of players single sessions at a time. To handle both of these, below are presented the special rules that we use. You will find a number of variant systems from Paizo and specific changes we've made, as well as some additions and tweaks to core game systems. Any Homebrew systems that we devise will be presented below as well. Check out the Homebrew and Banned Content page if you're looking for our homebrew character options (such as feats, classes, and items). Changed Base Rules This section describes the various rules that have been changed for base classes, and core rules. Check the Variant Campaign Rules for which optional systems we use, and how they're implemented. Aasimar / Tiefling Aasimars and Tieflings can select the variant heritages. They may also trade out their spell-like ability for one of the options presented in Table: Variant Aasimar Abilities and Table: Variant Tiefling Abilities respectively. If a player selects a mental ability score bonus, it replaces one of the mental ability score bonuses they are granted already. This eliminates the Fiendish Heritage feat. Antipaladin Antipaladins are presented as paladins that have fallen from grace, and embraced the twisted power of the abyss. Although some settings and games allow for antipaladin orders, or characters to begin their paladin careers as chaotic evil, Fiend's Reach does not. Because of this, antipaladin requires application. You must have played as a paladin and renounced your oath to take levels in antipaladin. Characters that make this shift are generally afforded an instantaneous conversion of all their paladin levels into antipaladin. This restriction applies to both the base class, variant multiclassing, and multiclass archetypes. Eschew Materials Any class or feature that grants Eschew Materials as a bonus feat instead grants any bonus feat that the character would otherwise qualify for. Eschew Materials has also been subsumed into Eschew Esoteric Materials. Use this feat in place of the stand. Use Eschew Esoteric Materials in place of Eschew Materials for all purposes. Feats, Traits, and Prestige Classes Any feat, trait, or PrC that has a story prerequisite (any prerequisite that is not purely mechanical) is subject to approval. Ask (through application or simply in discord) before taking the option, as the story prerequisite may not be available in the world. Leadership For every 2 cohorts you have among all of your characters take up 1 of your character slots. If you do not have enough character slots for all of your cohorts, some of the cohorts are unavailable until you’ve gained another character slot. When you gain the Leadership feat you can attract a level 1 cohort. Just like your main character, your cohort can apply XP to either their main levels, or their gestalt track. You may also spend RP to give them templates (following the normal rules for acquiring templates). You may purchase starting levels for the cohort at 1/2 the RP for a main character. Their ECL may not exceed 2 less than your ECL, and their gestalt levels may not exceed 2 less than your gestalt levels. Cohorts may only take 1 downtime activity per week (rather than day) and they are allowed to Earn XP so long as they follow the above restrictions. You may select a monstrous cohort if you use the Monstrous Companion feat, or purchase the ability in the RP shop. Similarly, you may select an intelligent item to be your cohort by purchasing the option in the RP shop. Leadership score bonuses and penalties: * You count as having a special ability (c’mon, you’re PC has to be level 7 so of course they have special abilities). * You have great renown when you achieve 30 fame (or if you purchase the Nobility item with RP). * If you have a building with at least 3 rooms you count as having a stronghold/guild house/base of operations. * Phantoms and Eiodilons cause the -2 penalty due to having a familiar, special mount, or animal companion. * You receive the "moves around a lot" penalty if you lose one of your businesses due to absence. This penalty goes away when you reassert yourself as the owner, or when you've built another building after abandoning all claim. Losing Control Characters that lose control of themselves (e.g. through an intelligent magic item, or medium's spirit influence) are under the GM's control during the session. After the session, said character is controlled by the player, but they should still act according to the controlling influence (e.g. a player can roleplay their character being controlled by a Champion spirit). Sneak Attack Multiple classes that have the same sneak attack progression (such as Rogue and Vivisectionist Alchemist) add their levels together for determining total sneak attack dice (i.e. you cannot take 1 level in each and gain 2 sneak attack dice at level 2). When sneak attacking with spells, you may only apply your sneak attack to a number of attacks granted by the spell equal to the number of attacks you can make due to a high bab. For example, a Rogue 3/Wizard 11 would have a 7 base attack bonus, sneak attack, and a caster level of 11. If they cast Scorching Ray they would get 3 rays, but only be able to apply sneak attack to two of those rays, since they would only be able to make two attacks with their high bab. Arcane Tricksters gain the following special ability at 1st level: Assassin Spells: At 1st level an arcane trickster knows how to target the vulnerable parts of the subjects of her spells. She may treat her caster level as her base attack bonus for the purposes of determining how many times she may apply sneak attack with her spells. Earning Gold Mundane Crafting You may craft mundane items at a rate of 100 gp x Ranks in Crafting Skill per day. Any feats or class features that add a bonus to crafting are considered additional ranks for the purposes of progress per day. You need only spend 30% of the item’s final gp price in raw materials. You may spend Labor to enhance your crafting speed. Every Labor you spend adds 20 gp to the amount of gp progress you make in a day. You may spend up to your effective ranks in Craft in Labor to increase production. You may craft any number of items per day, so long as you craft no more than the above limits on gp per day. Magical Crafting You must have the spell on your spell list to craft an item with that spell. To ignore the caster level requirement of an item requires an increase to the DC of the spellcraft check equal to 5 + the amount by which the caster level of the item exceeds your own (e.g. a character with a 7 caster level would increase the spellcraft DC to craft an item with a caster level requirement of 8 by 6). Accelerated Crafting does not reduce the crafting time to 4 hours, but instead is treated as doubling your crafting speed. Multipliers to crafting speed work like adding damage/critical multipliers. Instead of adding the multipliers together, you increase the multiplier by 1 (e.g. x2 crafting speed and x3 crafting speed would yield x4 crafting speed, not x5). So for instance, if you do accelerated crafting (which lets you double the amount of crafting done in a day) and something else that doubles the amount of magic item crafting progress you complete, you would craft 3,000 instead of 4,000 gp worth of magic items. Selling to NPCs Whenever you sell items to an NPC vendor, you do so at 70% the market price of the item. This means that using magical crafting to make money will net you a profit of 20% the market price of the item, and mundane crafting will net you 40 gp per effective skill rank per day. Using Skills to make Money The Craft, Perform, and Profession skills can all be used to generate gold directly. Instead of rolling to determine how much money you make in a day, instead you make a flat amount of gold equal to 50 gp per rank in the skill. As with mundane crafting, any feats or class features that give you a bonus to these skills give you effective ranks for the purpose of determining how much gold you generate in a day. Money Making Caps No mater how you do it, you are limited in the amount of money that you can make in a month. Whether it is from selling mundane items, magical items, or just performing a trade (Craft, Perform, or Profession as listed above). This represent the amount of actual wealth that you can extract from the settlements in a given month, but also is meant to act as a growth cap due to downtime. You may only make up to 10,000 gp per month from the options listed in this section (Selling to NPCs and Using Skills to Make Money). Note: This does NOT apply to treasure awarded from sessions. The gold you receive from sessions is entirely independent of this cap, and is meant to be your primary source of income at later levels anyway. If a GM rewards specific treasure in the form of mundane or magical items and you chose to sell those, treat them separate from this cap as well. Variant Campaign Rules Active Spellcasting If you are a spellcaster, you may opt in to the Active Spellcasting system. You do not suffer spell fumbles. Regardless of whether or not you use Active Spellcasting, we do use the Spell Critical system. You may overclock a spell if you take the Overclocked Spell feat. Background Skill Binding Outsiders Corruption Corruptions are meant to be used as an affliction rather than a boon. The tales that these story elements create are ones of descent from grace (as the name would imply). As such, players may apply these corruptions to their good characters that they wish to see struggle with a taint upon their flesh and soul slowly taking over. The exception to this is the Promethean, which characters of any alignment can take. You must apply for your character to gain a corruption. Characters with corruptions gain a Manifestation at every odd main character level. You are likely to only receive one corruption, but in the event that you are approved for additional corruptions, you may select manifestations from either corruption when you gain a new manifestation. You are still subject to advancing the corruption of both though. When a character reaches the final stage of a corruption, they are subject to all of the penalties of said corruption except for becoming an NPC (if you choose to fall to evil and continue the character's story). Although the Possessed corruption doesn't specify, treat the possessing spirit as evil. If your character isn't killed by the corruption (such as with Lich) then you may convert your corruption manifestations and stains into the simple template for that corruption, or you may apply for the full template. You gain XP as appropriate for gaining a template in this way. Evil and neutral characters wishing to gain these corruptions may apply as normal for the full templates, or the simple corruption templates. Downtime The downtime system is used with the following modifications: * Do not divide your check by 10 when earning gp. * Buildings and Organizations are all pooled together to determine your bonuses to Earning Capital rolls. This means that your businesses can make a maximum of 5 Earn Capital rolls per day (1 for gp, Goods, Influence, Labor, and Magic each). * There is no spending limit on capital in Fiend’s Reach. * You may use a crafting skill appropriate for building buildings to craft the Goods and Labor components of a room. * The time it takes to build a building or recruit an organization is equal to the build/recruit time of the longest room/team, plus the time for every room/team with a build/recruit time of 2 or less days, +2 days per room/team that takes longer than 2 days to build/recruit. ** The build time for buildings can be decreased by spending additional capital. After adding up the costs of the building, you may reduce the time it takes by 25% by paying double the base Labor cost of the building. You may reduce it to 50% by instead spending triple the base Labor cost of the building. Reducing the time by a further 25% requires spending this extra Labor, as well as an amount of Magic equal to the base Labor cost. Finally you can get the building built within a day by spending the above additional capital and an additional amount of Magic equal to triple the base Labor cost (2x base Labor in additional Labor and 4x base Labor in additional Magic). *** This represents using spells like fabricate, as such, you cannot use those spells to speed up the build time on buildings. ** Organizations can be recruited faster by spending more Influence. Reduce the time by 25% by doubling the base Influence cost, or by 50% by tripling the base Influence cost. * Separate buildings and separate organizations can be built/recruited at the same time. An organization that works in one of your buildings can likewise be recruited at the same time as the building is being built. * You may not spend Magic capital on crafting magic items. * You may use Magic capital for expensive material components for spells. * Downtime events happen once per IC week (the same day that the markets refresh). ** When a downtime event happens, roll in the bot channel to determine which event happens. ** If you hold multiple buildings and organizations, roll randomly to determine which building or organization experiences the event. If the building doesn’t have a random events table use the closest approximation, or roll on the generic table if there is none. If the organization doesn’t have a random table, use the closest approximation. If there is none, don’t include it when rolling to determine which building/organization is affected. * Players must apply for spell research prior to investing the time and gp into researching. * Research an Occult Ritual is a new downtime activity. * You may take the Earn XP downtime activity only after the character has played in a session, and before ECL 10. You may only apply the XP earned to your main XP track. Esoteric Material Components These may be purchased from any NPC vendor that sells magical items or components. These are optional components. The Eschew Materials feat does not apply to Esoteric Material Components, but has been altered to interact with Esoteric Material Components. Players cannot scrounge for components. Firearms Use the Emerging Guns rules. Fractional Bonus Progression To avoid cheesing saves or attack bonuses, we use the Fractional Bonus Progression system. If you have gestalt levels, your class has the better of base saves and base attack bonus of the two classes. For example, if you have 3 levels of Rogue, and 2 Gestalt Fighter levels, count your first two levels as having a BAB (d10 or d12) and good Reflex and Fortitude saves, but a poor Will save. Your 3rd level has a BAB (d8) and good Reflex, but poor Fortitude and Will saves. This adds up to +2 ¾ BAB, +3 ½ Base Reflex, +3 ⅓ Base Fortitude, and +1 Base Will. Hero Points The hero point system is in use with the caveat that characters gain a hero point when they hit a new ECL. Hero points are gained along with class features and the 2nd 50% of Skills and HP (essentially the experience mark of a full level). Characters may pick the Antihero option (opt out of hero points in exchange for a bonus feat). You may retrain this feat later to opt back into the hero points system, but you only get 1 hero point (as if you were a higher level character entering play). Idols These are a thing, expect them to crop up from time to time. Occult Rules Since these are listed under the Variant Rules section of the PFSRD it is worth listing this here. Additionally, Occult Classes are completely legal as well. Occult Rituals require research to discover. A player may apply for an Occult Ritual in the same way that they would apply for spell research. The one approving the Occult Ritual will determine the time it takes to research the ritual. Primal Magic Areas of primal magic do pop up from time to time. Reputation and Fame You begin the game with a Fame score of your ECL + Charisma modifier and this many Prestige Points. Every time you gain an ECL, or successfully complete a session, your Fame increases by 1 and you gain a Prestige Point. Additionally, you may claim other increase to Fame here. Scaling Magic Items Scaling Magic Items are available. These come in two varieties. Fixed and Scaling: Fixed: * The base item can be used without any of the higher-level upgrades, or you can pick a higher level and purchase an individual item that has the base abilities plus one or more unlocked levels. You should use the standard price for that level of scaling item, as described on Table: Value of Scaling Items. For example, you could purchase out a spear of the huntmaster as a CL 6th item worth 3,202 gp with just the base abilities, a CL 8th item worth 4,950 gp with the base abilities plus the 8th-level unlockable ability, a CL 10th item worth 9,300 gp with the base abilities plus the 8th- and 10th-level unlockable abilities, and so on. Scaling: Scaling items require a special ritual to unlock their greater powers. A character that owns a scaling item must burn exotic incense, soak the item in baths of yliaster infused mercury, or other strange ritual that consumes expensive materials with a gp value equal to the difference between the current cost of the item, and the value of the item described on Table: Value of Scaling Items to unlock the higher level bonuses and abilities. This process adjusts the current cost of the item to the new value. Settlements Every week magic item markets refresh. This is when the randomly rolled magic items are rolled again (clearing out the previous magic items) and when there is a new chance to roll again to see if a magic item is available. The following rules are in place for Fiend’s Reach: * There is no buying or selling limit. * The highest level NPC spellcaster is assumed to be 16, and the highest level spells that can be cast are 8th (this goes for spell services as well as magic items). ** Even if established that there is a higher level NPC spellcaster during a session, it is assumed that said NPC does not offer their services unless otherwise stated by the GM team. ** Even then, it will be for a limited time. * All magic items that meet the above restriction are available. * The randomly rolled magic items are sold for 75% market value. For all other settlements there is no purchase limit (adventurers can sell items for 70% of the items market value no matter the settlement). Otherwise they follow the standard rules, and most will be player created. Simplified Kingdom Building Rules We use the above simplified rules for establishing a new settlement. Simplified Spellcasting If you are a prepared spellcaster you may opt into this system to save yourself some bookkeeping. Spellblights Spellblights are a thing. They can be caused Arcane Spell Failure, Crafting Magic Items, Spell Turning, Teleportation Mishaps, and Use Magic Device as described on the spellblights page. Staff Recharging Instead of requiring a spell be cast into a staff once per day to recharge it, all staves recharge at a rate of one charge per day. This counts as casting a spell into the staff, and so you may not recharge the staff by casting additional spells unless you have a feature that allows you to do so. Stamina and Combat Tricks The “Feat Access” option in in place. Starting Occupations Every character has an occupation that defined their pre-adventuring career. This can be a wide variety of things, and doesn't necessarily need to be their first occupation in their life. Select a bonus feat you qualify for that comes from this occupation (such as Power Attack for a Soldier , or Skill Focus (Stealth) for a Scout). Select two skills from this occupation as well (such as Ride and Profession(Soldier) for a Soldier or Survival and Perception for a Scout). You may either treat these skills as class skills or gain a +1 competence bonus on them. Technology Technology from sources such as Ultimate Technology and Technology Guide are not available for purchase. Keep in mind that to craft a technological item, you must have a lab. There are no labs in Fiend's Reach, and no known labs in the world; nor can labs be created. As the game progresses, these might be uncovered. Treat technological items as magic items for purposes of availability in settlements that have a lab. Settlements that have a lab are limited to the types of items that the lab can produce in addition to any other restrictions that the settlement imposes. Variant Multiclassing Characters may opt into the Variant Multiclassing system anytime prior to reaching standard character level 3. If they are past 3rd level, they may retrain their 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th feats to Variant Multiclassing. If the character wishes to opt out of variant multiclassing, or change their secondary class, they may treat the Secondary Class Features as feats for the purposes of retraining (but they must retrain all of their secondary class features before gaining back their feats, or changing the secondary class). Wild Magic Like Primal Magic, areas of wild magic pop up from time to time as well. Otherwise, wild magic only pops up when a spell caster has opted into it with the Surging Metamagic feat. Words of Power This variant is available. Don’t take it unless you really want to though. This variant no longer receives support from Paizo, and won’t receive much from us. Unchained Classes Staggered Progression is in effect. We use Fractional Base Bonuses as noted above. The Unchained Classes are also the preferred option (Barbarian, Monk, Rogue, and Summoner). Unchained Monks can select archetypes from the chained Monk. To do so, they will replace a Ki Power gained if the feature that is replaced by the archetype is now a Ki Power. The level that they lose the Ki Power is the closest level to the level of the feature that would be lost on the chained Monk and that ki power can no longer be selected. For example: a Monk of the Iron Mountain would replace their 4th and 6th level Ki Powers with the Bastion Stance and Iron Limb Defense features, since those features normally replace Slow Fall gained at 4th and High Jump gained at 5th. This monk would be unable to select these ki powers with their later level ki powers. Skill unlocks are available to only the Unchained Rogue. Additional Variant Options If you are curious about an option listed as ‘optional’ or ‘variant’ feel free to ask about it. If it is a system change that only affects options that are added (such as Vehicles) your will likely be able to take it. This is also true of options that allow you to make different choices with options already present (such as Variant Multiclassing). Variants that overhaul entire systems (such as Revised Action Economy) are likely to be denied, or at the very least, allowed for the individual character if the system can be incorporated into a single character and not the entire game. Variants that just add options to a character (such as Mythic) will not likely be approved, unless the GM team wishes to add this to the entire game. So don’t get your hopes up if you’re interested in a variant or optional system that falls into the last two categories. Category:Character Options Category:Rules Category:Guide